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Sienko Foundation Storyteller Musings Solotarian Views Lynne Wiora Tek Poker News Blog Some Biscuits Evil Eye Emporium Niggling Doubts Pressure Release Sara as Mommy runswithscissors Defective Yeti Afternoon Delight trancejen The Terrarium Bird Nird Slipperily Tofu Hut Stereo Gum Links Fixed Gear Gallery Get Crafty This is Grand Featherproof Books Gapers Block Chicago Bird Watching	No one must know my terrible secret... House of Noh! Saturday, July 19, 2003 A few days ago it was raining and the el was late and the platform to the loop got super-crowded. Because of the rain, everybody huddled under the roofed area of the platform and that made matters worse, but as soon as the train appeared umbrellas blossomed above the crowd and the commuters that had spouted them ran out onto the uncovered portions of the platform. Their strategy seemed to be to reach a door to the car that opened onto the uncovered portion of the platform in the hopes that it would be less crowded. I’m not sure that works, but I was forced to board the el at an uncovered portion of the platform because of bottlenecking at the doors under the roof, so insofar as you just want to get onto the train that strategy seems to have some merit. But every car was crowded. I was pushed into the aisle between the doors. The woman in front of me wanted to take a wider stance so she wouldn’t have to hold onto the train with both hands and could read her copy of The Onion, and she kept glaring at me and then looking behind me and shuffling her feet like she was trying to move but couldn’t. What she didn’t realize was that I was pushed up against a giant in a Hawaiian shirt with a Starbucks cup of coffee and who was listening to Ace of Base or Sir Mix-a-lot or something through those kinds of headphones that allow everybody else on the el to hear what the person is listening to. I was pushed up against the giant.... almost... intimately... and I definitely had nowhere to go. I eventually convinced the woman in front of me of this fact by making a good faith effort at looking behind me for space and then shuffling my feet like I was trying to move but couldn’t. Eventually she was satisfied and stopped giving me her “look and shuffle.” The thing I realized about the whole experience is that there’s a system of uniform non-verbal signals and body gesture communications that the el-commuting society participates in to keep order under such circumstances where space is such a limited resource. It consists of very strict rules and carefully choreographed movements that become a whole dance of nature of sorts, evolving out of the environment and everybody participates, like bees communicating in their hive, whether commuters realize it or not. I realized that just riding on the el during a commute is the kind of thing that Marty Stouffer would spend reels and reels of film on and then spend hours reviewing the frames to capture a still image that evokes the power and majesty of a commute on the el. Then he’d silk-screen the image on a t-shirt that he’d wear under his dress shirt to nature videographer conventions and other important naturalist functions. And if you’re wondering what Marty Stouffer was doing with silk screening equipment in the first place, I bet he had some sitting around in his garage or basement that was left over from that time he thought it would be really hilarious to make his own t-shirt that said, “Nature show hosts do it outside and in front of cameras,” and then wear it on his show. But when he took off his jacket at the european tree marmot shoot and showed off the t-shirt he spent all night making, everybody on the set just groaned really loudly and made him change his shirt. And the kind of hurtful, derisive remarks made by the european tree marmots were what convinced Marty that they weren’t laughing with him but instead were laughing at him. Then Marty got all embarrassed and told everybody that making the shirt had been his wife’s idea and she had made him wear it. “Just like this beard!” Marty shouted. “I hate this beard!” Then he had grabbed big handfuls of it and acted like he was trying to pull it off until the camera guy apologized to Marty on behalf of the entire crew and marmots in general and said that, in fact, everybody really liked the shirt and they had just said those mean things because they had been jealous because the shirt was “totally cool.” But back to the societal dance of nature that occurs on the el during commutes, I said the whole thing was carefully choreographed so as to preserve order but now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t really come up with any other moves besides the “look and shuffle.” ...... Oh! Here’s another rule: you’re not supposed to stare at women and then when they finally look back at you yell “BOOBS!” really loudly and then act like you just told a really funny joke. Brian 12:16 PM Sunday, July 13, 2003 The grocery store on Southport is turning me into a goddamn liar. Last Wednesday I rode a few stops on the brownline on the way home from work because it took me by the Jewel where I needed to pick up a few household goods, like tofutti brand soy sour cream, rubbed dalmation sage, rice wine vinegar, wheat gluten, that sort of thing. The Jewels’s got this “preferred advantage card” promotional scheme, but it’s become a terribly corrupt system. It probably started out as, whatever, like a good idea or something, but somewhere the Jewel lost its way. See, on lots of items there are two prices marked, the normal price and the “preferred savings” price. But the thing is that only the seriously elderly ever go about getting a card. I mean, where do you even go to get one of those things? But at the checkout aisle each cashier has his or her own card, and after the cashier asks you if you’ve got a card, and you say you “don’t have it with you,” the cashier will just swipe the cashier’s card. They’ve done it a million times for everybody. As far as I can tell, that’s how it’s supposed to work. So this last Wednesday when a customer ahead of me in the checkout aisle was asked if she had her card with her and she made up this totally bullshit story about leaving her preferred card in her other purse and pled in a cloying tone of voice for the cashier to swipe the cashier’s card it made me fucking sick. When it was my turn to check out and the cashier asked me if I had a preferred card I told the TRUTH. “No, I don’t have a card.” I told the cashier. “I don’t have a card ANYWHERE. I NEVER SIGNED UP FOR ONE AND I NEVER WILL.” “Well, then you don’t get preferred card savings,” the cashier told me. I had never imagined that it would come to that. I stood there, mouth hanging open in shock, while the cashier rang up my purchases and then I paid full price. The unpreferred price. After my purchase I just sort of stood there, aghast, jostled by shopping carts and with my plastic grocery bags hanging down by my knees as the cashier started scanning the prices on the next customer’s groceries. “Do you have a card?” I heard the cashier ask the next customer. The customer was terrified of this new hardball cashier, terrified that she wouldn’t get the preferred savings. “Yes!” the next customer squeaked. “I DO have a card. I most definitely have a card! You see, it’s just that I left it at home... Say, you wouldn’t mind swiping your card would you?” “She’s lying!!” I shouted, “she doesn’t have a card! She’s LYING!!” But the cashier swiped the cashier’s card anyway. I couldn’t believe it. “I can’t believe that you are rewarding her for lying!” I shouted at the cashier. “This isn’t how the system is supposed to work!!” Then the cashier picked up the phone and called for a price check on “security.” “Where are my preferred card savings!?!” I shouted, louder this time. “This is America!! I told the truth! I’m the only one in this goddamn store who told the fucking truth about not having a preferred savings card! I’m the only who deserves preferred card savings!! Where are my preferred card savings?! Where, GOD! WHERE!?!” Then the cashier told me that shouting wouldn’t get me any preferred savings and that if I didn’t leave right then they’d call the cops. So I left, but not before calling everybody in that store a bunch of muthafuckas (in my mind) and threatening to speak to the cashier’s manager and to alert the ACLU to this grocery store corruption (out loud). But I never spoke to the cashier’s manager, and I never called the ACLU. Instead of correcting injustices and solving corruption, I frittered away my Saturday drinking soy milk cappuccinos and reading “In Watermelon Sugar” for like the fifteenth time. And now, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve become part of the problem and a goddamn liar. This morning I went grocery shopping and the preferred / unpreferred spread on broccoli crowns was 72 cents. “Do you have a preferred savings card?” a different cashier asked me at check-out. “I do,” I said meekly and full of shame, “it’s just that I left my card at home, you know, accidental-like.” “Well, brighten up!” The chipper manager told me. “I’ll just use this handy card I have here and you’ll get the preferred savings you deserve!” Brian 6:58 PM Wednesday, July 09, 2003 My article was just published at www.getcrafty.com. Now I’m famous. In celebration of my newly found fame, I have ceased washing my hands after using public restrooms. That harsh liquid soap was drying out my Hollywood typing hands. You might not know this if you’re not famous, but famous people can’t have dried out lizard hands. I don’t mean to perpetuate any famous / not famous hierarchy here or anything, or make any value judgements about lizards, but that’s just the way the world works. Besides, when I use public restrooms I touch NOTHING. That is, of course, unless someone is watching me, then I’m forced by public pressure to grudgingly flush the urinal after I’m done whizzing and, under those circumstances, I wash my hands. But I guess that it’s good to wash my hands once in a while, you know, so fame doesn’t make me forget who I am and where I came from. I also return to my roots and wash my hands after I go #2. Brian 10:12 AM Tuesday, July 01, 2003 There’s a huge pile of empty cardboard banker’s boxes just outside my office door. The secretary who sits outside my office spent all day making them yesterday. All yesterday I could hear her pulling tape off the roll and bending cardboard along perforations. And now they’re just sitting there, empty, stacked all orderly against a credenza, six boxes wide, seven tall, and three or four deep. I’m finding it hard to concentrate with the siren’s call of all those freshly made empty cardboard boxes - they’re beckoning me. Whenever I look in their direction I’m overcome by a terrible urge to go out there and smash them all. Maybe it’s the office supplies anarchist in me, I don’t know. But one thing’s for certain, I could run out there full speed and do a full-body leap onto the boxes and, according to my mental calculations, the boxes will break my fall and I will walk away unscathed, although the boxes will be all smashed. But I mustn’t. Must....resist.....must not.... smash.....boxes. Or I could punch and kick the boxes until they were all smashed, that would be rad. Or I could heft them over my head and hurl them at potted plants and into the copy machine room. That would be totally sweet. Ooh! Maybe I could take my roller desk chair down the hallway, then get a good start and scoot backwards in it until I’m going really fast right and then I’ll smash right into the pile of boxes with my desk chair. I’ll need a helmet made out of office supplies for that stunt (safety first!), I’m thinking maybe something along the lines of a large Fed Ex box with eye holes cut in it.....and I should probably wait until most people are out to lunch. But I must resist..... I wonder if I could smash just one box? One teensy tiny cardboard box? Or maybe I could just ask the secretary if she’s got, like, an old box that she wouldn’t mind me smashing? That would probably be a bad idea, though, because smashing one box will not be enough to sate my urge to smash boxes and once my appetite for box smashing has been whet, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to hold back and I’ll keep smashing until there aren’t any boxes left, and then all the boxes will be smashed and I’ll stand out there amidst the carnage of smashed boxes and be like, “Good Lord!! What have I done?!? What have I done!?!?!?” Then I’ll have to hide in my office and when everybody gets back from lunch people will ask me if I saw who smashed all the boxes and I’ll be all defensive and respond something like, “I don’t know!! I saw a guy out there wearing an orange construction helmet and smashing pants, he probably smashed your PRECIOUS BOXES! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do!!” and everybody will know that I’m lying and whisper among themselves about how I’m probably the one who smashed the boxes and I’ll hear their whispers but I’ll pretend that I don’t and I’ll sit there all red-faced at my desk pretending to be really busy with work. Brian 11:53 AM

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House of Noh!

Saturday, July 19, 2003

A few days ago it was raining and the el was late and the platform to the loop got super-crowded. Because of the rain, everybody huddled under the roofed area of the platform and that made matters worse, but as soon as the train appeared umbrellas blossomed above the crowd and the commuters that had spouted them ran out onto the uncovered portions of the platform. Their strategy seemed to be to reach a door to the car that opened onto the uncovered portion of the platform in the hopes that it would be less crowded. I’m not sure that works, but I was forced to board the el at an uncovered portion of the platform because of bottlenecking at the doors under the roof, so insofar as you just want to get onto the train that strategy seems to have some merit. But every car was crowded. I was pushed into the aisle between the doors. The woman in front of me wanted to take a wider stance so she wouldn’t have to hold onto the train with both hands and could read her copy of The Onion, and she kept glaring at me and then looking behind me and shuffling her feet like she was trying to move but couldn’t. What she didn’t realize was that I was pushed up against a giant in a Hawaiian shirt with a Starbucks cup of coffee and who was listening to Ace of Base or Sir Mix-a-lot or something through those kinds of headphones that allow everybody else on the el to hear what the person is listening to. I was pushed up against the giant.... almost... intimately... and I definitely had nowhere to go. I eventually convinced the woman in front of me of this fact by making a good faith effort at looking behind me for space and then shuffling my feet like I was trying to move but couldn’t. Eventually she was satisfied and stopped giving me her “look and shuffle.” The thing I realized about the whole experience is that there’s a system of uniform non-verbal signals and body gesture communications that the el-commuting society participates in to keep order under such circumstances where space is such a limited resource. It consists of very strict rules and carefully choreographed movements that become a whole dance of nature of sorts, evolving out of the environment and everybody participates, like bees communicating in their hive, whether commuters realize it or not. I realized that just riding on the el during a commute is the kind of thing that Marty Stouffer would spend reels and reels of film on and then spend hours reviewing the frames to capture a still image that evokes the power and majesty of a commute on the el. Then he’d silk-screen the image on a t-shirt that he’d wear under his dress shirt to nature videographer conventions and other important naturalist functions. And if you’re wondering what Marty Stouffer was doing with silk screening equipment in the first place, I bet he had some sitting around in his garage or basement that was left over from that time he thought it would be really hilarious to make his own t-shirt that said, “Nature show hosts do it outside and in front of cameras,” and then wear it on his show. But when he took off his jacket at the european tree marmot shoot and showed off the t-shirt he spent all night making, everybody on the set just groaned really loudly and made him change his shirt. And the kind of hurtful, derisive remarks made by the european tree marmots were what convinced Marty that they weren’t laughing with him but instead were laughing at him. Then Marty got all embarrassed and told everybody that making the shirt had been his wife’s idea and she had made him wear it. “Just like this beard!” Marty shouted. “I hate this beard!” Then he had grabbed big handfuls of it and acted like he was trying to pull it off until the camera guy apologized to Marty on behalf of the entire crew and marmots in general and said that, in fact, everybody really liked the shirt and they had just said those mean things because they had been jealous because the shirt was “totally cool.” But back to the societal dance of nature that occurs on the el during commutes, I said the whole thing was carefully choreographed so as to preserve order but now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t really come up with any other moves besides the “look and shuffle.” ...... Oh! Here’s another rule: you’re not supposed to stare at women and then when they finally look back at you yell “BOOBS!” really loudly and then act like you just told a really funny joke.

Brian 12:16 PM

Sunday, July 13, 2003

The grocery store on Southport is turning me into a goddamn liar. Last Wednesday I rode a few stops on the brownline on the way home from work because it took me by the Jewel where I needed to pick up a few household goods, like tofutti brand soy sour cream, rubbed dalmation sage, rice wine vinegar, wheat gluten, that sort of thing. The Jewels’s got this “preferred advantage card” promotional scheme, but it’s become a terribly corrupt system. It probably started out as, whatever, like a good idea or something, but somewhere the Jewel lost its way. See, on lots of items there are two prices marked, the normal price and the “preferred savings” price. But the thing is that only the seriously elderly ever go about getting a card. I mean, where do you even go to get one of those things? But at the checkout aisle each cashier has his or her own card, and after the cashier asks you if you’ve got a card, and you say you “don’t have it with you,” the cashier will just swipe the cashier’s card. They’ve done it a million times for everybody. As far as I can tell, that’s how it’s supposed to work. So this last Wednesday when a customer ahead of me in the checkout aisle was asked if she had her card with her and she made up this totally bullshit story about leaving her preferred card in her other purse and pled in a cloying tone of voice for the cashier to swipe the cashier’s card it made me fucking sick. When it was my turn to check out and the cashier asked me if I had a preferred card I told the TRUTH. “No, I don’t have a card.” I told the cashier. “I don’t have a card ANYWHERE. I NEVER SIGNED UP FOR ONE AND I NEVER WILL.” “Well, then you don’t get preferred card savings,” the cashier told me. I had never imagined that it would come to that. I stood there, mouth hanging open in shock, while the cashier rang up my purchases and then I paid full price. The unpreferred price. After my purchase I just sort of stood there, aghast, jostled by shopping carts and with my plastic grocery bags hanging down by my knees as the cashier started scanning the prices on the next customer’s groceries. “Do you have a card?” I heard the cashier ask the next customer. The customer was terrified of this new hardball cashier, terrified that she wouldn’t get the preferred savings. “Yes!” the next customer squeaked. “I DO have a card. I most definitely have a card! You see, it’s just that I left it at home... Say, you wouldn’t mind swiping your card would you?” “She’s lying!!” I shouted, “she doesn’t have a card! She’s LYING!!” But the cashier swiped the cashier’s card anyway. I couldn’t believe it. “I can’t believe that you are rewarding her for lying!” I shouted at the cashier. “This isn’t how the system is supposed to work!!” Then the cashier picked up the phone and called for a price check on “security.” “Where are my preferred card savings!?!” I shouted, louder this time. “This is America!! I told the truth! I’m the only one in this goddamn store who told the fucking truth about not having a preferred savings card! I’m the only who deserves preferred card savings!! Where are my preferred card savings?! Where, GOD! WHERE!?!” Then the cashier told me that shouting wouldn’t get me any preferred savings and that if I didn’t leave right then they’d call the cops. So I left, but not before calling everybody in that store a bunch of muthafuckas (in my mind) and threatening to speak to the cashier’s manager and to alert the ACLU to this grocery store corruption (out loud). But I never spoke to the cashier’s manager, and I never called the ACLU. Instead of correcting injustices and solving corruption, I frittered away my Saturday drinking soy milk cappuccinos and reading “In Watermelon Sugar” for like the fifteenth time. And now, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve become part of the problem and a goddamn liar. This morning I went grocery shopping and the preferred / unpreferred spread on broccoli crowns was 72 cents. “Do you have a preferred savings card?” a different cashier asked me at check-out. “I do,” I said meekly and full of shame, “it’s just that I left my card at home, you know, accidental-like.” “Well, brighten up!” The chipper manager told me. “I’ll just use this handy card I have here and you’ll get the preferred savings you deserve!”

Brian 6:58 PM

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

My article was just published at www.getcrafty.com. Now I’m famous. In celebration of my newly found fame, I have ceased washing my hands after using public restrooms. That harsh liquid soap was drying out my Hollywood typing hands. You might not know this if you’re not famous, but famous people can’t have dried out lizard hands. I don’t mean to perpetuate any famous / not famous hierarchy here or anything, or make any value judgements about lizards, but that’s just the way the world works. Besides, when I use public restrooms I touch NOTHING. That is, of course, unless someone is watching me, then I’m forced by public pressure to grudgingly flush the urinal after I’m done whizzing and, under those circumstances, I wash my hands. But I guess that it’s good to wash my hands once in a while, you know, so fame doesn’t make me forget who I am and where I came from. I also return to my roots and wash my hands after I go #2.

Brian 10:12 AM

Tuesday, July 01, 2003

There’s a huge pile of empty cardboard banker’s boxes just outside my office door. The secretary who sits outside my office spent all day making them yesterday. All yesterday I could hear her pulling tape off the roll and bending cardboard along perforations. And now they’re just sitting there, empty, stacked all orderly against a credenza, six boxes wide, seven tall, and three or four deep. I’m finding it hard to concentrate with the siren’s call of all those freshly made empty cardboard boxes - they’re beckoning me. Whenever I look in their direction I’m overcome by a terrible urge to go out there and smash them all. Maybe it’s the office supplies anarchist in me, I don’t know. But one thing’s for certain, I could run out there full speed and do a full-body leap onto the boxes and, according to my mental calculations, the boxes will break my fall and I will walk away unscathed, although the boxes will be all smashed. But I mustn’t. Must....resist.....must not.... smash.....boxes. Or I could punch and kick the boxes until they were all smashed, that would be rad. Or I could heft them over my head and hurl them at potted plants and into the copy machine room. That would be totally sweet. Ooh! Maybe I could take my roller desk chair down the hallway, then get a good start and scoot backwards in it until I’m going really fast right and then I’ll smash right into the pile of boxes with my desk chair. I’ll need a helmet made out of office supplies for that stunt (safety first!), I’m thinking maybe something along the lines of a large Fed Ex box with eye holes cut in it.....and I should probably wait until most people are out to lunch. But I must resist..... I wonder if I could smash just one box? One teensy tiny cardboard box? Or maybe I could just ask the secretary if she’s got, like, an old box that she wouldn’t mind me smashing? That would probably be a bad idea, though, because smashing one box will not be enough to sate my urge to smash boxes and once my appetite for box smashing has been whet, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to hold back and I’ll keep smashing until there aren’t any boxes left, and then all the boxes will be smashed and I’ll stand out there amidst the carnage of smashed boxes and be like, “Good Lord!! What have I done?!? What have I done!?!?!?” Then I’ll have to hide in my office and when everybody gets back from lunch people will ask me if I saw who smashed all the boxes and I’ll be all defensive and respond something like, “I don’t know!! I saw a guy out there wearing an orange construction helmet and smashing pants, he probably smashed your PRECIOUS BOXES! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do!!” and everybody will know that I’m lying and whisper among themselves about how I’m probably the one who smashed the boxes and I’ll hear their whispers but I’ll pretend that I don’t and I’ll sit there all red-faced at my desk pretending to be really busy with work.

Brian 11:53 AM

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